The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,122

experience, but without a core of truth.

She was obviously enthralled. A subtle light came into her eyes. She asked me to explain how I appeared in the other form.

I described to her how I had been made a vampire at the age of twenty. I’d been tall for those times, blond, with light-colored eyes. I told her again about burning my skin in the Gobi. I feared the Body Thief intended to keep my body for good, that he was probably off someplace, hidden from the rest of the tribe, trying to perfect his use of my powers.

She asked me to describe flying to her.

“It’s more like floating, simply rising at will—propelling yourself in this direction or that by decision. It’s a defiance of gravity quite unlike the flight of natural creatures. It’s frightening. It’s the most frightening of all our powers; and I think it hurts us more than any other power; it fills us with despair. It is the final proof that we aren’t human. We fear perhaps we will one night leave the earth and never touch it again.”

I thought of the Body Thief using this power. I had seen him use it.

“I don’t know how I could have been so foolish as to let him take a body as strong as mine,” I said. “I was blinded by the desire to be human.”

She was merely looking at me. Her hands were clasped in front of her and she was looking at me steadily and calmly with large hazel eyes.

“Do you believe in God?” I asked. I pointed to the crucifix on the wall. “Do you believe in these Catholic philosophers whose books are on the shelf?”

She thought for a long moment. “Not in the way you ask,” she said.

I smiled. “How then?”

“My life has been one of self-sacrifice ever since I can remember. That is what I believe in. I believe that I must do everything I can to lessen misery. That is all I can do, and that is something enormous. It is a great power, like your power of flight.”

I was mystified. I realized that I did not think of the work of a nurse as having to do with power. But I saw her point completely.

“To try to know God,” she said, “this can be construed as a sin of pride, or a failure of imagination. But all of us know misery when we see it. We know sickness; hunger; deprivation. I try to lessen these things. It’s the bulwark of my faith. But to answer you truly—yes, I do believe in God and in Christ. So do you.”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“When you were feverish you did. You spoke of God and the Devil the way I’ve never heard anyone else speak of them.”

“I spoke of tiresome theological arguments,” I said.

“No, you spoke of the irrelevance of them.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. You know good when you see it. You said you did. So do I. I devote my life to trying to do it.”

I sighed. “Yes, I see,” I said. “Would I have died had you left me in the hospital?”

“You might have,” she said. “I honestly don’t know.”

It was very pleasurable merely to look at her. Her face was large with few contours and nothing of elegant aristocratic beauty. But beauty she had in abundance. And the years had been gentle with her. She was not worn from care.

I sensed a tender brooding sensuality in her, a sensuality which she herself did not trust or nurture.

“Explain this to me again,” she said. “You spoke of being a rock singer because you wanted to do good? You wanted to be good by being a symbol of evil? Talk of this some more.”

I told her yes. I told her how I had done it, gathering the little band, Satan’s Night Out, and making them professionals. I told her that I had failed; there had been a war among our kind, I myself had been taken away by force, and the entire debacle had happened without a rupture in the rational fabric of the mortal world. I had been forced back into invisibility and irrelevance.

“There’s no place for us on earth,” I said. “Perhaps there was once, I don’t know. The fact that we exist is no justification. Hunters drove wolves from the world. I thought if I revealed our existence that hunters would drive us from the world too. But it wasn’t to be. My brief career was a string of illusions. No one